Cultivated: Plants, Hair and the Aesthetic of Control

Cultivated: Plants, Hair and the Aesthetic of Control

Jeffrey Hoelle, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara

In this talk, Jeffrey Hoelle traces the imprint of cultivation across the naturally growing covers of the land and body—plants and hair. The presentation builds directly from research in agricultural fields and cattle pastures at the edge of the Amazon rainforest to domestic landscapes and hair salons in frontier Brazilian cities and beyond. Where tangled forest once stood, clean pastures and ordered crops now sit on properties with geometric edges. This imprint leads directly to the human body, where hair, like plant growth, is cut, trimmed, and otherwise managed. Seemingly separate domains of agriculture, landscaping, and personal grooming are shown to be governed by a similar aesthetic of control. This unique pairing of land and body expands our understanding of cultivation as a practice and an ideology that operates in frontier Amazonia and closer to home. It influences how we conceptualize the covers that grow on and around us, and our imagined relations with nature in the future. Hoelle argues that we must understand this system of thought and its role in environmental destruction and social inequality.